


Unfortunate side-effects

by evarosen



Category: Terminator Genisys (2015)
Genre: CRACK I SAY - Freeform, Crack, M/M, Zombie Apocalypse, brief mention of John Connor/Danny Dyson - Freeform, narrowly averted?, yes it is that kind of fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-11-25
Packaged: 2018-04-21 09:36:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4824008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evarosen/pseuds/evarosen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Zombies?" Danny said. "Nah"</p><p>John looked at him, and didn't laugh.</p><p>There was a bang on the door.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cyberbutterfly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyberbutterfly/gifts).



John looked at the greeting guard. He would, regrettably, have to dispose of him.

On the other hand, he would need all the help he could get; he was pretty certain that, while Sarah's Guardian was currently at the bottom of the lake, he wouldn't remain there for long.

'In for a penny, in for a pound', some British man at The Resistance was fond of saying.

"Good evening,Doug" John greeted back, and extended his hand. After all, if the process failed, he would only die anyway, wouldn't he?

*

Danny looked around. Doug should be on reception, but he wasn't. _Someone_ should be on reception, what with a helicopter almost crashing right on top of the building.

He looked at the screen, counting back the hours to Genisys' start. Because of this, he didn't notice John running toward him until he almost crashed into him.

"John! Did you get the call?"

It was a token question, because John had surely gotten it, seeing as he was standing there in the middle of the night, in...

Was that paintball gear?

"Is that paintball gear?" Danny asked, suspiciously. Then he heard the screams. "Are you secretly using the building to host a paintball game _today_ , of all possible...?"

John stared at him, a little wild-eyed; then he turned toward the main stairs, where more men were coming, running.

And...groaning?

"Run." John said, and when Danny just stood there, gaping, grabbed him by the arm and took off toward the main office.

*

"Zombies?" Danny said. "Nah"

John looked at him, and didn't laugh.

There was a bang on the door.

"Is someone in there?" called someone whose voice Danny didn't recognize.

"Someone alive!" a female voice added.

"We are not being chased by the living dead! They look more like some kind of Terminators, only more..." the first voice argued, in a lower tone.

John went to the door and opened it.

"More dead? And bite-y?" John said.

The three people on the other side of the door immediately pointed what totally didn't look like paintball guns at him.

" _Dead and bite-y_?" Danny repeated.

"Kyle doesn't know what zombies are." John continued, as if he wasn't at all bothered or surprised at being held at gunpoint by the three newcomers, one of whom was also holding... 

_Was that a detonator?!_

"You did this, didn't you," the woman said, in a strangely chastising tone.

"You were going to blow the building with me in it, weren't you." John answered, defensively.

"We hoped you weren't going to make it back in time," the younger man said.

"There was an 80 per cent possibility..." the older man started; the other one cut him off.

" _I_ hoped..."

One of the security guards appeared suddenly, at inhuman speed; he grabbed the older guy's arm, and his jaw just _unhinged_ , showing what it looked like a hideous mix of blood and crawling metal things inside.

He took a bite right off the big man's forearm; and then John's forearm turned into a blade, and he used it to pierce right into the-- _thing_ 's-- head.

" _That_ is a zombie, Kyle. Now get inside!" he said.

Or at least that's what Danny thought he said, he wasn't sure, what with being busy passing out.


	2. Chapter 2

Danny came to with the girl slapping his face, none too gently. He inmediately wished he hadn't, though.

Because as soon as he opened his eyes, and sat up, the first thing he got an eyeful of was John and the other guy cutting the older guy's foream and...

Danny thought the correct, technical term was 'degloving'.

Ah, education. Putting the correct terms to the unspeakably gross.

Also in the name of education, Danny made an heroic, herculean effort not to be sick right on the spot.

He succeeded in making it to the antique vase. His only consolation was that it had been, in fact, a gift from John.

John who, apparently, _was_ one of those things chasing them, only less 'dead and bite-y'.

"Are you ok?" The thing that apparently John had been all the time asked him.

"Yeah, all right. Zombie robots. Why wouldn't I be alright?"

"Fine. Now I need you to..."

"I was being sarcastic! I'm not fine! You created zombie robots in my building and now...!"

"Mr. Dyson." The older man (and his bloody robot hand Danny was doing his best not to look at) took a few steps toward him. "This is an abnormal, unforeseen ocurrence. My calculations show it would require all our combined cooperation to at least attempt..."

Danny squinted at him. There were chunks of his _face_ missing, showing metal underneath; but aside from that...

"Wait. You're that constructor worker. The one we laid off for writing 'John Connor is an Antichrist machine dickhead' in the building's foundations?"

The other room occupants, John included, just stared at him.

The girl sort of face-palmed.

"Well, now we know for sure _I_ didn't send you." John said, drily. 

"You had access to the building and you did _that_ instead of just blowing it up before they had the chance to initiate the Genisys project?" The younger man said.

"See, if you'd been with me you'd be smart." John said, smugly, giving the young man a look weirdly full of pride.

"Smart enough to start the techno-zombie apocalypse all by yourself." The girl said, rolling her eyes.

As if attracted by her words, the bumps on the door got louder.

"I did not start the zombie apocalypse! There must be, what, ten people aside from us in the building? Which Skynet must have sealed by now? I can get them myself, and then we..."

"Er..." Danny said. He felt like throwing up again.

"What?" the younger man asked.

Danny looked at John.

"Remember when I asked you if you got the call? Well, it was an emergency call directed at all the personal involved with the project. In the event that the nearby accident had somewhat damaged the power in the zone, and we had to move some of the most delicate..." he trailed off. The body armour on John's suit seemed to spontaneuosly get thicker.

"How many people would have gotten the call, Danny?"

Danny didn't have time to answer there will be enough to bring even the blinded door of his office down, because the practical demostration of that fact followed immediately after.


	3. Chapter 3

John would have had more to say about Danny's secret back door that apparently allowed him to leave his office unnoticed and pretend to work longer hours than he really did, but for the fact the only reason he didn't also have one for the exact same purpose was he could just shapeshift and go out without anyone being the wiser.

Also, the zombie-infected building that was kind of his fault.

"Here, hold this", he said, giving Danny the laptop he'd salvaged from the now zombie-ravaged office.

"I don't think smacking them with that is going to help me much. Don't you have a weapon?"

"Do you know how to use a weapon?"

Kyle was already handing him one; John rolled his eyes and slapped it away.

"This is running a simulation, with the purpose of finding out why they turned out as they did. You make sure it stays in one piece while it does that, and I will make sure they don't get to you. Sounds fair?"

"So you didn't intend to bring the machine-zombie apocalypse. That's a relief." Sarah deadpanned. "That is, if we believed you."

John rolled his eyes; and then looked around while he was at it. This part of the building looked deserted so far, but if the zombies turned out to be mostly like him (except dead), they wouldn't take long to find them.

"My intention was merely to recruit help. There is nothing in Skynet's research on the creation of hybrids to suggest...."

"What is this Skynet thing that you keep naming?" Danny said, holding the laptop as a shield.

"Yes, John, tell Mr. Dyson what Skynet is," Sarah said.

"It's nothing." John snapped. Their best bet was to reach the safe vault on the basement, where he could stash his family and Danny while Skynet finished developing (which wouldn't take long, now), and hopefully would come up with a solution to their undead problem.

"Chased by the cannibalistic undead," John muttered under his breath.

He added a layer of armour to his forearms, just in case.

"You're an infiltrated who knows what who created an army of machine-zombies! Don't tell me it's nothing!"

"Skynet is Genisys' working title. Nothing more, see, it's nothing."

"See, he doesn't only lie to me," Kyle said to Sarah, in a defensive tone.

Sarah made the face-palming gesture again.

"It's not a lie..."

"Ok, but did you tell him Genisys was a sentient AI that would ultimately cause the nuclear apocalypse and enslave what was left of mankind?"

"What?!" Danny spluttered, and the laptop went flying. Kyle, being the closest, made a dive for it and managed to catch it.

"That's a 'no', I take" Sarah added, drily.

*

"John, you were supposed to protect me."

The hologram seemed to have chosen the moment to better scare the bejesus out of everyone.

It didn't help that Sarah and Kyle's first reflex was to shoot at it, thus causing more zombies to come roaring on their direction.

John quickly dispatched the two coming his way, while Pops jammed his now metallic fingers in the head of the remaining one.

"Unless there's a horde coming, do not shoot in the hallways where we have no way to run!" John said.

"You're not the one giving orders here," Sarah snapped.

"I'm the one who can get rid of them without attracting a handful more, so I beg to differ," John said; then he turned his attention back to the reappearing image. "And I am; they're far from your physical location, aren't they?"

"But you are in their immediate proximity. Wouldn't it be logical to proceed to their extermination, or to assimilate them so they present no further threat?"

"I told you they were Terminators," Kyle said.

"They are zombies, Kyle, she does know more than you in this one too," John corrected him.

"Zombies?!" The child hologram said, in a higher voice.

"There was a problem turning humans to the hybrid state, so I would prefer not to zombify my family for the time being. The building is locked, correct? Alex?"

"Zombies?" the hologram repeated; and it was hard to tell, it being see-through and all, but to John's improved vision it looked like it had paled.

"Yes; the transformation took a turn..."

The hologram just...went off, dissapeared; and also the lights went off.

"Maybe allowing it to stay on while I watched those movies wasn't such a great idea after all." John said.

*

Danny gave up tinkering with the elevator. The power was off in the entire building; maybe John or the other robot guy would be able to pry them open, and maybe the other two would be able to climb it down; but as far he was concerned, the stairs would have to do.

"I can't believe it just did that!" John was saying at his back. "You put care and affort on them, and then they just turn out to be ungrateful bastards that turn on you at the slightest chance."

So Danny imagined he was talking about his (apparently mass murdering) AI, but seeing the pointed look he was directing at the younger guy, he wouldn't bet on it.

"Yes, you raise them and they turn to be dangerous technological things that try to kill you. And don't even send you a Mother's Day card, I bet," the girl said, just as meaningfully.

"I became humanity's last hope as you always wanted me to be, what else do you want?" John said. 

"So, the cannibalistic undead," the younger guy said. They all turned to look at him. "I just...I was remembering when we got stalked by those ones, back in the south? Though they weren't undead."

"Ah, yes," John said, as if the guy had reminded him of a tv show they used to watch a few years back. "But at least you could shot those anywhere."

"You got chased by cannibals in the future?" the girl said.

"Not chased. There was a group that tried to steal our weapons; when we tracked them back..."

"To be fair, we never actually saw..."

"The _bones_ were there..." the younger guy argued.

"Cannibals? And you _wanted_ to cause that future?" Danny said. He was sensibly filtering most of their conversation, because curling into a fetal ball and rocking back and forth would _not_ help him survive this, but...

His main programmer was a cyborg-something come from an apocalyptic future trying to launch said apocalypse with their phone app.

And machine zombies, because why not?

"It always happens anyway." John said. "Well, maybe not the cannibals, I didn't check in that one, but Skynet? Always exists, and _you_ always help on its creation, so I wouldn't be so high and mighty if I were you."

"In the first timeline, it was Mike Dyson..." the terrifying old guy said.

"And Sarah tried to shoot him, so consider yourself lucky I'm here to take the blame this time." John finished triunphantly.

"I tried to shoot his dad?" the girl said.

"That is correct," the older guy said. "However, John Connor prevented that timeline's Sarah Connor from terminating Mike Dyson, with the help of John Connor's own t-800 Guardian."

"I tried to shoot him in front of you? How old were you?"

"Ten, but I wasn't..."

"You knew him when he was ten? What?" Danny said. The girl couldn't be more than twenty, at most.

"I guess a card was _really_ out of the question," she said.

John seemed about to say something else, but a scream coming from the bottom of the stairs got their attention first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might have to watch the movie again since the layout of the building has completely slipped my mind (to the point that I'm only vaguely sure the safe vault was down), so once I've done that, I will edit with the correct details.
> 
> Or some kind reader could give me tips? And I'll credit, of course.


	4. Chapter 4

The scream turned out to be a battle cry, uttered by a slim black girl in scrubs currently bashing zombie skulls with a metal baseball bat.

It was very likely she wouldn't have needed any help had the zombies not been technologically advanced.

"Blythe?" Danny said, stopping to gawk at her. John and Pops made quick work of the two zombies she was battling (one of which was also wearing scrubs), and then John took away her bat when she tried to brain _him_ with it.

""Hey! Hey, stop. I'm not a zombie!" He said. She retreated, her back against the wall.

"But you're infected! You're turning already!"

"Blythe! Blythe, no, he's ok! Well, not ok, but..."

The girl straightened up and cautiosly approached John, who extended the bat to her. She snatched it back.

"I always knew there was something wrong with you," she said grumpily. "I'm so glad you're not dating my brother anymore."

"We were never dating," John said, while Danny protested "It was only one date!"

"You were dating him?" Kyle said. He gave Danny a not-at-all-subtle hostile glare.

"No," John said firmly. The girl in the scrubs snorted.

"It was all a misunderstanding..."

"Don't you want to know what's going on here? Also, what are _you_ doing here?" Danny said. 

"Emergency services were called all over this street because of the accident. I came here to see if you were alright, since all of you fools came rushing here instead of, I don't know, _evacuating the building almost hit by a chopper_."

"How do you date someone by accident?" Kyle insisted.

"And who are you?" The girl said. "I know computer people are weird, but they aren't usually armed."

"That is an excellent question," Danny said, looking pointedly at John.

"We can all introduce ourselves when we're no longer _surrounded by hybrid zombies_ " John deflected. 

He headed to the next set of stairs. Danny followed, clutching at the laptop, while Kyle walked behind them sulkily.

Sarah turned toward the girl. "Blythe, right?" she said. "I'm Sarah. Do you know how to use a gun?"

"I made my residence in Boston and had the graveyard shift, what do you think?" Sarah took a small gun from her boot and handed it to her.

*

"And in the Cristmas party last year, I swear I saw John try to kiss Danny right before the toast. Of course the dumbass didn't even notice, but..."

"I _didn't_..." John started; then tilted his head and seemed to think about it. "I suppose it could have looked like that, though."

"You two were talking alone in the garden and when he looked away you made a move as if to touch his face. What else could have been?"

John didn't say anything and looked kind of shifty-eyed.

"Almost turning him into a zombie must beat almost shooting a relative, I should think," Sarah muttered.

"Wait, what?!"

"Give me a break, I changed my mind, didn't I?"

"Yes, you only _almost_ did to me whatever you did these people, you're my hero," Danny deadpanned. "Wait, why would you...?"

"I wasn't supposed to zombify anyone, ok? I thought brieftly in assuring your cooperation, and besides, if things progressed as they should have, being a hybrid would have ended up being the default state for humans under Skynet's rule."

"You were planning on _assimilating_ the population?" Sarah said, mildly horrified.

"No, I wanted to remain unique and special, because that has worked for me so well my whole life," John said drily. Sarah glared at him,and he relented. "Sorry," he said. "But still I don't understand what went wrong. The process was supposed to succeed or fail, not...anything in between."

"Skynet only made trial in the population in the future," Pops intervened. "There could have been alterations on their genetic structure, either by effect of the radiation after Judgment Day, or the mutation of a disease, or..."

"Yes, thank you, that's why I'm trying to find," John said, gesturing at the computer Danny was still carrying. He'd tried to give it to Blythe, but she remarked she'd already kicked zombie ass, so she'd be more useful in a fight, and nobody contradicted her. After all, she was still holding the metal bat.

"And where did you get that?" Danny asked her after a while.

"When the...things..."

"Zombies," Kyle said. She glared at him.

"Yes, thank you, Metallica reject, I know what they were," she said. Kyle mouthed 'Metallica?' at Sarah, who just shrugged and ignored him. "Anyway, when they ate the rest of the paramedics, I ran into an office and this was under the desk."

"Great, so this building has always been full of psychos," Danny said. "Wait, how long have you been here?"

"Not long. Why?"

John and Sarah exchanged a look.

"That means the building's not sealed."


	5. Chapter 5

"Alex! Alex, show yourself, that's an order!" John yelled again, ineffectually.

Danny was searching the news for signs of mayhem.

" _Mayhem_?" Blythe repeated.

"If the word's ever applied to a situation, the zombie apocalypse should be it," Danny said.

Except it didn't; because there had been reports of violent attacks on the building's proximity, but after the fact the attackers and the victims were always seen...

"Oh, crap."

*

"Perhaps if we enter the core room, it would feel threatened enough to show up," Kyle said.

"Yeah, good try," John muttered absently, fumbling with the main control commands. He was trying to access the building's primary functions to at least restore power. "This is a temporary truce; once I get rid of the zombies, I..."

"What, you'll try to kill us again?" Sarah said.

"If the zombies keep pilling up outside, he won't have to bother," Danny answered irritably. _He_ had managed to connect the surveillance to the laptop he was carrying, since the system had an independent power source. Then he almost dropped the computer again. "You said _kill_...?"

"They tried to kill me first." John protested. The lights flickered on, then off again. "Damn it."

"That's not how I remember it..." Sarah started; John straightened up and looked at her in disbelief.

"I was talking to you and your Guardian shot me with a rifle! Twice! It wasn't that long ago!"

"Don't yell at me!" Sarah said, and John sat back down and kept working at the console sulkily.

"Wow, she _really_ is his mom," Blythe told Danny. He nodded, and made shushing gestures at her. He really didn't want to think too much about it.

"You're still protecting your apocalypse-bringing AI! Having already caused another apocalypse in the meantime! And you did try to kill us in my father's bunker, and in the police station, and..."

"Actually..." Kyle said, thoughtfully. The banging on the door got louder; Pops walked closer to it, preparing for it to break. It didn't sound like it would be long. John swore and his fingers moved faster.

"What?" Sarah said.

"You weren't really trying to kill us, were you?" Kyle said, going to stand next to John (and, Blythe couldn't help but notice, positioning himself so he was between John and Danny). "In all the time we've been together, when you wanted something dead, it would be dead shortly. And those were Terminators; I don't suppose you've gotten less efficient now. Unless you want to be."

"Kyle, this is _really_ not the time..."

"Were you, John? Would you be able to kill Sarah? Or me?" Kyle pressed. John's hands stilled over the keyboard.

"I lost the two of you once already. I..." he said. "This is useless, everything is connected to Skynet's servers. Connected to Alex, who's apparently afraid of zombies even though he doesn't have a physical body!" he yelled at the ceiling. "One would think he would overcome his fears of what he doesn't know, to save the closest thing he has to a family, but no." He clenched his fists at his sides. "We should get moving."

"John..." Sarah started. John got up and shifted to his T-3000 shape. He was resolutely looking at nobody.

"Let's finish this so I'm once again the only abomination around, alright?"

"Oh, _burn_ ," Blythe muttered. Danny elbowed her, and she shrugged.

"Nobody thinks you're an abomination," Kyle said. "Right, Sarah?" she didn't answer. "Sarah!"

"Leave her alone, Kyle," John said. Kyle gripped John's shoulder, and John sort of leaned into his touch for a second before moving away.

An uncomfortable silence followed. They moved closer to the back door, preparing to flee. John and Kyle moved to one side of the Dyson siblings and Pops and Sarah to the other. 

"His boyfriend from the future is right, though; compared with the things outside, nobody would say..." Blythe started. Kyle, who'd been charging his weapon, dropped both the gun and the bullets and bent down hurriedly to pick them up.

"He's not..." John started, but there wasn't enough time for explanations. The door finally broke down.

*

They ran to the hallway; down the line, it parted two ways. Sarah, busy shooting the zombies, took the wrong one. 

"Sarah, no! Come back!" John screamed; they turned around to go after her, and realized the zombies had all done the same.

Only two zombies on scrubs remained; the rest were swarming the door to the broom closet in which Sarah had managed to lock herself.

"They're going after _her_?" Blythe said, a little breathless. Her gun was empty already; she had resorted once again to her trusty bat, and was doing quite a good job of it, if she said so herself.

John had managed to reach the closet door; he tore at the handle, and a bullet from inside flew right next to his cheek.

"It's me! Come on, we have to go!" he said. They're cleared the area well enough to make a run for it, but more were coming already. People in lab coats that had been part of the building's personnel, and people in formal wear, presumably coming back from office hours to be poached by the lurking machines on the streets. And once their number had grown...

"You _were_ programmed to kill her, weren't you?" Danny said, the professional part of his mind taking over.

"No!" John said. They spotted what looked like an empty room, and went inside. "I mean, I _have_ free will, I'm not..."

"But they're infected with your nanites, and their mind is gone. You said he tried to kill you," Danny continued, looking at Kyle. "Would he have, before?"

Kyle didn't answer. He and John were looking at each other.

"Told you they were Terminators," Kyle said.

"Every fucking Terminator in existence was set up to kill me?!" Sarah cried in disbelief.

"No," John said, looking around. "In fact, after the first attempt, the remaining ones were send after..." he looked up, realization on his face. "After me."

"But the ones in the hallway went after Sarah first." Kyle said.

"When John was all grey and scary," Danny said. "You think that threw them off the trail?"

"Maybe you should shift back," Blythe said; as if to prove her point, a zombie that apparently had been lurking behind a large file closet tackled him to the ground.

The scary thing was that it didn't make any noise, didn't grunt or roar like the others had; instead was silently doing all its best to eat John's face.

"Shoot it!" Blythe said, hitting it with the bat; it didn't seem to be doing anything.

Pops tried to pierce its head with his metal hand, but it was trashing too much; worse of all, the head _shifted_ , and teeth appeared at the back of its neck.

All save Pops screamed.

"Shoot it!" Danny and Blythe screamed again.

"I can't, it's moving too much," Sarah said. John had formed a helmet over his face; but since the components of his armour were the same stuff he was made of, who knew how much it really protected him?

And then Kyle jumped on the zombie's back, grabbing its neck in a chocking hold.

He managed to pull it back, and John pierced its head.

But not before one of those mostruous extra teeth sunk into Kyle's hand.


	6. Chapter 6

Danny saw Kyle getting bit, then John rushing toward him, his hand shifting, and closed his eyes.

He'd seen enough zombie movies to figure what John was most likely to try.

Only a few seconds passed, and he didn't hear any scream.

He opened his eyes again, in time to see John pulling his fingers from the wound, black nanites crawling up his arm. He stumbled back, whatever that entered his system moving inside him. He turned to his grey form again, and his throat seemed to bulge, his jaw starting to unhinge as they'd seen the zombies' do.

Blythe and Pops pointed their guns at him; but instead of attacking them, he merely rushed pass them to a corner of the room, fell to his knees, and vomited what looked like black goo, or possibly chunks or coagulated blood.

Danny certainly wasn't going to go and examine it.

John looked a bit better after, but not much; he took a few steps back toward the others, and went down again.

His head, however, did snap up when he heard the sound of the gun clicking. 

He shifted back to his human form, his eyes wide and alarmed. Kyle was sitting on the floor, cradling his injured hand; Sarah was pointing a gun at his head.

"What are you doing?" he said. 

"Waiting for him to turn," Sarah said, without taking her eyes from Kyle. 

Danny only took his eyes from John for a second; apparently that's all he needed to walk toward Blythe, take the gun from her and point it at Sarah. Pops immediately aimed at him, and just like that, it was a mexican stand off between cyborgs and potential terrorists from the future.

Not to mention the possible zombie infectee.

And to think Danny had thought this would be his big day.

*

"Get away from him," John said.

Sarah looked up at him. "Are you going to shoot me?"

John only held her gaze for a second; then he lowered his eyes, along with the gun. "Please, don't do it," he said.

Sarah hesitated; she looked down at Kyle again. He looked pale and resigned. But otherwise normal.

Danny was about to say just that, when Blythe elbowed him to let her through, and just walked to them and crouched next to Kyle, peering at him.

"He should have turned by now," she said. "The other paramedics were trying to have me for dinner in a matter of seconds. Hey, let me see that."

Kyle had been covering his wounded hand with the sleeve of his jacket, and pressing on it; he reluctantly pulled the fabric back.

The point of infection wasn't spreading, at least not visibly; but it didn't look like a normal wound either. The zombie had taken a chunk of flesh between the wrist and the tumb; and the edges around it had turned grey.

"Whatever you did, it seems to at least have slowed the process. Just _what_ did you do?" Blythe said. Sarah lowered her gun at last, and she too loked expectantly at John.

"I don't even know. I just..." he said. He seemed to be about to add something else, but before he could that the _crawling_ thing started again around his neck, and he doubled over and pucked once more.

Yup, it looked like coagulated blood up close.

Danny would have preferred to remain in doubt.

*

John had sworn he was alright, though nobody believed him enterely; but it wasn't like they had many options anyway. He shifted to his grey form, and went out in seach of the medical kit that was on the accountant's office. The accountant was a hypocondriac and a prepper freak. He'd also been stealing from them, so not even Danny would be sorry if he'd happened to be around in zombie form.

Blythe had remained next to Kyle, doing her best to clean and bandage his hand with tap water from the bathroom and a piece of Danny's shirt.

"You're not planning to cut off my hand, are you?" Kyle had asked John, when he'd been about to leave.

John had looked nerviously at Blythe when it became clear Kyle wasn't joking. "Of course not. You're going to be fine," he'd said.

Kyle had snorted at that.

"Hey," John had said, cupping his face. "Look at me. You're going to be fine."

Kyle's expression had turned sad at that. "It's not like I've ever been able to tell if you're lying or not," he'd said, quietly.

Something deep and complicated seemed to pass between them; but it looked like it could take a while, so Blythe had cleared her throat.

"Well, I'm the doctor here, so _I_ promise not to cut off your hand if you promise not to bite me in the near future. Deal?"

And so John had taken the chance to laugh it off and leave.

Sarah, after the almost-shooting incident, had stayed as far away from Kyle as possible, and so had Pops. Danny had also chosen to sit in a far corner, holding the laptop and quietly freaking out.

Kyle, for his own part, kept stealing worried glances at the door.

"I wasn't wrong when I called you his boyfriend from the future, was I?" Blythe said, low enough for only them to hear.

"It's not like that," Kyle said. He seemed quite unhappy about it.

"But you wish it was."

Kyle bit his lower lip, and looked down; but before he could answer, the lights suddenly came back on.

"Did John do that?" Sarah asked Danny. 

He checked the security cameras. "No, he's still killing zombies in the hallway outside the office."

"Then...?"

Skynet's hologram, now significantly older, appeared in the center of the room.

"I've re-evaluated the situation. John is right, I must help him. Since the failed hybrids seem to target him, I've sealed the building and will proceed to its destruction once my programs have finished loading worldwide," it announced.

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for the zombies' creation is from Pillstaker, but since he only mentioned it in a passing joke, doesn't want to co-author. Still, I felt I should credit.


End file.
